The root of hatred
Religion, colonization and the “loss of identity” are contributing factors to animosity directed toward the United States and other western nations.
By Ken Gale/Special to The Malibu Times
Asked if he had received any threats or angry phone calls, an Arab-American businessman in Malibu replied, “No, not at all, really. The people of Malibu understand the complexities of the world, they are knowledgeable about the kinds of things that are going on.”
But as a precaution, he asked that his name not be used. “Someone might get the idea,” he said.
He has reason to be cautious. Hatred has broken out across the country in the past week, in reaction to the hatred directed against the U.S.
First, there was that picture of a young Palestinian man firing his rifle in the air in taunting jubilation after last Tuesday’s attacks. Then, there were the scenes on TV of bullet holes in the windows of a Muslim school in New York where some 400 children were gathered. Shots fired into a mosque in Seattle. A Muslim grocer shot and killed in Dallas.
How did all this hatred get started? Why did it find its way to us? After taking the necessary steps to contain it militarily, how can it be calmed?
Religion, beginning with the Christian crusades against Muslims a thousand years ago, is one root cause of the hatred, according to Pepperdine University professor of international relations, Robert Lloyd. That crusade created a cultural gulf that has never been reconciled.
But the seeds of hatred in modern times, Lloyd believes, were sewn in 1918, after World War I, when the British and French colonized Palestine and other Middle Eastern lands.
“They introduced the concepts of states with boundaries in a place where there had never been states before,” he said. “Arabs see states as a western concept imposed by hated colonists. States failed to provide them with an adequate source of identity. Then, beginning in the late ’70s, they began to give up on states and turned to religion as a way to form some kind of pan-Arabic identity.”
Many Arabs see the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and subsequent support by the United States as “just another European colonial outpost in the Middle East,” Lloyd says.
The extreme rhetoric on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict over many years was a precursor to last week’s violent outburst of hatred.
From the Web site of the Jewish Defense League, March 2001: “Know this, any aggression you plan against us shall be met with a fury unmatched in the annals of human history. Not a man among you shall survive it, not a house shall stand, nor shall even the humblest tree remain rooted to the soil.”
From an Islamic Jihad pamphlet of 1988: “We call on all our people-the old, the young and the children-to go out and hunt down the soldiers of the enemy. The hearts of your brethren – the Islamic Jihad in Egypt, Beirut, the Arab Maghreb, Islamabad, Teheran and the entire world – will be with you.”
On Sept. 11, the United States became a full participant in the war between those uncompromising factions.
But commentator Bruce Herschensohn, a one-time aide in the Nixon administration who now teaches a course in U.S. foreign policy at Pepperdine, believes the U.S. would have been drawn into a war in the Middle East even if there had been no Israel. He noted that Syria, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Chad, Oman, Egypt, Yemen – many of them states formed after colonization – had been fighting among themselves for territory long before the state of Israel came into being.
“The chances for the world’s only remaining super power not being drawn in is pretty remote,” he says.
Looking ahead, the immediate military response from the U.S. will “create new dynamics” in the Middle East. “That’s the goal,” says Robert Lloyd. Noting that Palestinian leader Yasar Arafat was forced to denounce the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C., Lloyd says he may now be free of the terrorist factions and could help broker a diplomatic settlement in the future.
Herschensohn disagrees. “I think he (Arafat) is delighted that Islamic Jihad or Hamas or whatever terrorist organization it may be did this because now he can say, ‘It’s not me,’ and at the same time he hopes to achieve the same objective of getting rid of all of Israel, and that really is the objective. And I’m not just saying I think so. Hey, I’ve read his stuff.”
Meanwhile, efforts are underway to quell the backlash of hatred in this country.
From the Jewish Anti-Defamation League: “We are disturbed that a number of Arab Americans and Islamic institutions have been targets of anger and hatred in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. At this time of profound anger and anxiety, no group in this country should be singled out for hatred, prejudice or blame based on their ethnicity or religion.”
Michael Absi, editor of the Beirut Times newspaper in Hollywood, noted that there are upwards of 2 million Arab-Americans in the United States.
“We choose to be here because we love America,” he said. “We are part of the larger society. We don’t have anything to do with the actions of those fanatics.”
And President Bush, in a visit to the Islamic Center of Washington Monday, said: “Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace.
“Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don’t represent the best of America,” he added. “They represent the words of humankind and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.”